Curated Islamic Videos

The Mindful Messenger by Shaykh Hamza Yusuf

The Mindful Messenger: This lecture looks at the current crisis of overstimulation, TikTok, Snapchat, Netflix, WhatsApp, and myriad other distractions. Advertisers speak of “mindshare,” which according to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary denotes “a controlling or predominant hold of one’s attention that is gained especially by marketing ploys”—in other words, what share of your mind can they occupy? Advertisement means to divert your attention to something the ad campaign (a military term) wants you to be mindful of. Entertainment, according to the dictionary, means “agreeable occupation of the mind, diversion, amusement.” Who or what is occupying your mind? Our Prophet s occupied his own mind with remembrance of God. He said, “Whoever makes his concerns (what he or she is mindful of) one concern (God), God will take care of all his other concerns.” One of the Arabic words for mindfulness is muhtamm, which means “what one is concerned with.”